Two people died on August 11 in Las Vegas when a major flood crashed into casinos, filling streets. The powerful monsoon rains in recent weeks reduced drought levels in the Southwest to close to none in the previous months. Extreme drought and flooding will become frequent and intense as the planet warms, scientists warned. Las Vegas in particular experienced its wettest monsoon season in a decade, according to Clark County officials. 

Rainwater poured in through a ceiling at Planet Hollywood casino, which reported 114 power outages in Clark County alone, affecting around 12,000 people. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Clark County Fire Department firefighters found a man in a flood channel where they rescued him and took him to the hospital. He later died at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada. Officials with Clark County’s Public Works Department used heavy equipment to take out extra debris from the flood channel on August 12 at 2 p.m., while firefighters dug through the piles by hand and found another victim in the flood channel. The firefighters removed the man from the debris and he remained safe. 

“They were in the storm stream, somewhere upstream when the rain hit last night. They were probably caught off guard because of the swift nature of the storm as it moved through the valley where they were not able to get out of the drainage fast enough,” county official Thomas Touchstone said.

The flood affected establishments and stores in the Las Vegas area. Intense lightning and thunderstorms flooded parts of Southern Nevada while leaving leaky ceilings, forcing table games to stop at a Las Vegas Strip casino. Water flowed through a parking garage flood channel near The Linq hotel and High Roller Ferris wheel, water also leaking from the ceiling onto gambling tables at the Planet Hollywood resort.

“So after a prolonged period of drought, the ground shrivels up and makes it harder for the water to get absorbed. Also, in the city there’s less vegetation, if there’s less vegetation, it will be hard for the rain to be absorbed. Another reason is the bad sewer system. If the sewer system is not perfect when the rain falls, the water is not going to drain from the street and on the footpath and it’s going to make things much harder. I think having a well-designed sewer system is the way to go to fix this problem,” Biology teacher Dhwani Patel said.